Annunciators can often serve a very important purpose in security systems. For example, security lapses can often represent risk to human life. Annunciators can function to notify occupants of the existence of the lapse as well the type of lapse.
Annunciators can be audible or visual or both. However, in order to accommodate persons with visual or auditory impairments, annunciators for security systems usually include both audible and visual alerting devices.
In order to reduce costs, security systems are often provided with a number of annunciators, sensors and access control devices interconnected with a control panel via radio frequency links. In some cases, these devices are battery powered.
In order to extend battery life, annunciators used in such systems must be constructed to use as little battery energy as possible. One solution to this problem has been to use strobe lights for visual annunciation.
In general, a strobe light consumes significantly less energy than a conventional fluorescent or incandescent light source. The low energy consumption results from the low cycle time of a strobe light and also because of the brilliant contrast produced when the strobed light flash occurs.
In order to further reduce energy consumption, strobe lights are also often used with collimating reflectors that collimate the light from the strobe into a light diffusing lens. Collimating the light from the strobe onto a diffusing lens causes the light source to appear much larger than the actual light emitting source presented by the strobe light. Because of the importance of strobe lights in security systems, there is a need for better methods of constructing such devices.